The term presents a conscious echo of the Beneš decrees which have been seen by critics as providing a blue print for the ethnic cleansing of German and Hungarian minorities from Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1948.
[citation needed] Following defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945, political leaders from the allied powers met at Potsdam between July 17 and August 2 in order to progress agreement on the post-war settlement.
A puppet government, loyal to Moscow, was well advanced with the systematic consolidation of control over Poland as defined according to the new de facto frontiers.
New laws were enacted by the Provisional Government of National Unity regarding German speaking people who were living within Poland’s new frontiers.
Following the shifting of borders between the two countries, on 6 May 1945 the new Polish general law on abandoned and deserted property was signed, affecting the Germans in several paragraphs.